Shiny new cookbooks often demand all manner of obscure ingredients. If you're attempting, say, Ferran Adria's eucalyptus leaf infusion, or Fergus Henderson's confit pig's cheek with dandelion, a quick look around the supermarket is unlikely to be fruitful. But help is at hand - if you know where to look. Across Britain, there are hundreds of specialist delis and suppliers, trading in everything from duck tongues to mole sauce. Here are a few of my favourites:

Wing Yip

With more than 4,500 imports from China, Thailand, Japan, Malaysia and the Philippines this is the flagship store for Wing Yip which has been supplying almost every Chinese restaurant in Britain since 1969. "We cater for the specialist," says Brian Yip, son of the founder. "We do chicken feet, duck tongues and 30 types of prawn - as well as your normal spare ribs." The fresh produce includes kai lan - a Chinese green vegetable, galangal, fresh tamarind and, in season, the notoriously smelly fruit, durian. Past the fish counter, live lobsters doze in cold tanks.

Regular customers, says Yip, will travel up to 150 miles to source his authentic ingredients. On the seven-acre site, around a dozen other businesses cater to the local Chinese market: a hairdresser, architect, dentist, printer, accountant, solicitor, two restaurants, and the Bank of East Asia. Sundays are particularly busy, says Yip: "The Chinese go to dim sum like Christians go to church. The father gets the groceries, the mother gets her haircut - then they meet up for lunch."

Alex Spink and sons

Arbroath Smokies are a legendary delicacy with their name protected under EU law: North Sea haddock are tied in pairs and dry salted before being smoked over wood. The Spink family have been curing the fish since 1977 and began with a weekly round, piling the fish in the converted back seat of a secondhand Hillman car. They still use old whiskey barrels for the smoking process. "The fish are best eaten as soon as possible," says Iain R Spink, one of their producers. "They come off the fire hot and juicy - I've eaten thousands and still love the things."

The Hive Honey Shop

A temple to the bee, run by James Hamill - a beekeeper since the age of five. The shelves of this south London shop are stuffed with every imaginable bee product: spiced mead, chocolate-covered honeycomb, propolis tincture - a natural antiseptic, rare books, royal jelly and vintage honeypots.

For Hamill, honey is like fine wine - a wide spectrum of colours and flavours, slowly improving with age. He stocks more than 50 varieties, including borage honeycomb, honey from Wandsworth common and imports from Argentina and Tasmania. "I often get batches of weird and wonderful honeys," he says. His current favourite is a bright yellow Sainfoin clover honey from Salisbury plain.

Lupe Pintos

When it comes to food trends, ex-chef Douglas Bell prides himself on being a step ahead. He says the shop has sold chipotle chillies (smoke-dried jalapenos) for nearly 18 years. "It took the TV chefs a wee while to catch up." He travels widely, gathering fiery ingredients for his two delis in Edinburgh and Glasgow: agave nectar - a sweetener; mole sauce - a rich sauce made with chocolate and chilli (mole means "concoction" in Mexican Spanish, hence guacamole); rare tequilas from Mexico; crunchy nougat; chorizo and spiced black pudding from Spain; mee goreng spice paste from Indonesia.

Bestsellers include his Tollcross chili pie, made by a local butcher, confectionery for homesick Americans, and his vast range of chillies: mild anchos, nutty-flavoured cascabels, guajillos - which make a bright red sauce for enchiladas and the smokey mulato. "A lot of people are talking about chillies now," says Bell. "They know you can bind the flavours of different ones together, four or five varieties in one dish."

Buckfast Abbey monastic produce shop

On the bank of the River Dart in Devon, Buckfast Abbey is home to 22 Benedictine monks, who in 1995, opened a shop and now import Chartreuse liquor, walnut butter, patés, herbs, incense, icons and mushrooms grown and dried by Belgian Cistercian nuns. On site, the monks produce fudge, honey, beeswax products and their famous Buckfast tonic wine - a French red infused with spices. Father Bennet Conlon says, "It's a unique place. The products are high quality. And the shop is doing very well." Buckfast Abbey, Buckfastleigh, Devon. 01364 645 570 www.buckfast.org.uk